What public figures are saying about the Snowden files. (May upset Guardian journalists)

Starting on p.9 of today's Guardian, you'll find an impressive range of voices sticking up for the paper's coverage of what it calls the "Snowden files" (they're not actually his, but whatever). The first belongs to the editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, and on p.13 the very last voice is Dilma Rousseff's, the president of Brazil. (They could also add Vince Cable to the list.)

Fine. But it's also worth revisiting the comments below – all made this week by respected public or establishment figures. Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, would probably dismiss them out of hand. "They would say that," he'd argue. Or: "Spies and politicians have been making the same arguments since the early 1990s." "We're living in a golden age of surveillance." etc etc.

"I'm not suggesting for a moment anybody in the Guardian gratuitously wants to risk anybody's life, but what I do think is that their sense of power of having these secrets and excitement – almost adolescent excitement – about these secrets has gone to their head. They're blinding themselves about the consequence and also showing an extraordinary naïveté and arrogance in implying that they are in a position to judge whether or not particular secrets are not likely to damage the national interest. They're not in any position at all to do that."

“You have to distinguish between the original whistleblowing intent to get a debate going, which is a responsible thing to do, and the stealing of 58,000 top-secret British security documents and who knows how many American documents which is seriously, seriously damaging… The assumption the experts are working on is that all that information or almost all of it will now be in the hands of Moscow and Beijing. It’s the most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever, much worse than Burgess and MacLean in the 1950s.”

"I have got no doubt that there were some parts of what was published which will have passed most readers of the Guardian completely by, because they were very technical, that would have been of immense interest to people who want harm."

“It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques. Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will. Unfashionable as it might seem, that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm.”

"The Prime Minister thinks [Andrew Parker's] was an excellent speech and we are, as you would expect, always keeping under review the measures that are needed to contribute to keeping our country safe. I would happily point you to all parts of the director general’s speech."

"The compromise of top secret information would be likely to have one or more of the following consequences; to threaten the internal stability of the UK or friendly countries, to lead directly to widespread loss of life. To cause exceptionally grave damage to the effectiveness or security of UK or allied forces or to the continuing effectiveness of security or intelligence operations. To cause exceptionally grave damage to relations with friendly governments and to cause severe long-term damage to the UK economy."